


Not So Sweet Dreams

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Force (Comics)
Genre: Burning Man, Confessions, Denial of Feelings, Dreams and Nightmares, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Internalized Homophobia, look it's not my fault that x-force #75 is one of the best single issues ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 11:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Roberto's been having horrifying nightmares involving Tabitha. He consults Dani about them and what they might mean.





	Not So Sweet Dreams

The first dream, or at least, the first dream he can remember, they’re all in the car. Almost all of them. Jimmy and Dani are up front, and he’s in the back with Tabs while Terry flies above them. Tabs is watching her, her head tilted back and her sunglasses pushed up so she can get a better look at their deputy leader bobbing in the breeze. 

She’s distracted, so she doesn’t notice Bobby shift seamlessly into his Sunspot form. She doesn’t notice him reaching for her until his hand is clamped around her arm, and it’s oh so easy to hoist her up and throw her behind the moving car into incoming traffic where she surely hits the asphalt and—

Roberto wakes with a strangled scream, clutching at the motel sheets. His shout wakes up everyone but Jimmy, who’s sleeping like the dead. Dani sits up from the opposite end of the double bed, where she and Bobby have been sleeping head-to-foot. “Dude,” she grumbles, rubbing her eyes. “What the hell?”

“S-sorry,” Roberto mumbles, looking down at his own hands in horror. “Bad dream.”

“We only got room for one screaming mimi on this team,” Tabitha reminds him from the rollaway. “Next time don’t eat so many Skittles before you go to sleep.” She puts her pillow over her head and thumps back down. 

That’s good, Bobby tells himself, that’s good. Tabitha is okay. It was just a dream. “Sorry everyone,” he says again. Dani rolls her eyes and lies back down. Tabitha is already snoring. 

* * *

The thing is, the dreams keep happening. He throws Tabs into a cement mixer. He strands her in the Grand Canyon. He tosses her off the top of a Ferris Wheel. He shoves her into a tank full of sharks. Nearly every night, he dreams about murdering Tabs in some horrible, horrific way, and eventually he can’t stand it anymore. 

* * *

“You’re kind of psychic, right?” he says to Dani abruptly. They’re hiding out in the shade of a tent at the Exploding Colossal Man Festival. The event was supposed to be a relaxing break from endless driving, motels and roadside attractions, but Bobby can’t stop thinking about his awful dreams. 

“I can see where the old codename Psyche might steer you wrong, but no, Bobby, I’m not exactly a telepath,” Dani reminds him. 

“Fine, sure,” he sighs. “But all the telepaths I know… I mean, I don’t trust them the way I trust you. I mean, you  _ know _ me, you know? I need you to tell me if… if I’m… if it’s really happening.”

“If  _ what’s _ really happening?”

It looks like Roberto is trying to work up the gumption to pull out his own teeth. “If… If I’m turning into a supervillain.” 

It’s so ridiculous that Dani  _ almost _ laughs… before she sees the look on his face. “Oh… Bobby, c’mon. Of course you’re not.”

“I’m not  _ sure _ ,” he admits, looking terrified. “After Reignfire… I know he wasn’t  _ me _ -me, but  _ something _ in him came from me, right? Something in me is so fundamentally evil that I became a monster…”

“Calm down, Hamlet,” she says.

“Dani, I’m serious.”

“Right, sorry,” she sighs, fidgeting with the straw in her mai tai. “Bobby, listen. You’re a good person. I know that. Everyone on the team knows that. Why would you think you were turning into a bad guy?”

Bobby shudders, and again looks like he’s trying hard to reveal some secret that’s determined to stay buried. And finally he admits, “I’ve been having these dreams… nightmares. And in every one of them… I kill Tabs.” 

Dani whistles. “That’s, uh.”

“I know! I know. It’s horrible,” Bobby laments, holding a hand over his eyes like he can’t bear to look at her. “I hate it, Dani. I hate what I’m becoming. It’s like no matter what I do, or what choices I make, I’m destined to become a monster. Right now it’s just the dreams, but I know that soon it will spread to my waking hours. Dani, we’ve been friends for a long time. If…  _ when _ … I become the supervillain I’m going to become, I want you to kill me.”

“Bobby—”

“No, it should be you,” he continues. “I can’t bear the idea of Sam doing it, or poor Rahne. Please, Dani.” 

“Hey!” she says, putting one hand up like a crossing guard stopping traffic. “Let’s take a hundred steps back, okay?” Dani says. She puts her hand on his shoulder. “You’re right— we have been friends for a long time. And I know you, okay? You’re arrogant, you’re overdramatic, you constantly steal my food. But you’re  _ not _ a bad guy. You’re not going to turn into a supervillain.” 

“How can you be sure?” he asks, and he looks so damn scared. Scared of  _ himself _ . It’s like the time he accidentally tossed Sam into a tree, but ten times as bad. 

Dani sighs. “Let’s… let’s talk it out, okay? Let’s just talk it out. What  _ exactly _ happens in these dreams you’ve been having?”

Roberto fidgets with the label on his beer bottle, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “They… they usually start out normal.”

“Alright,” Dani says, prodding him to go on. 

“We’ll all be hanging out. Just… watching TV or buying snacks or something. Like… okay, last night? I dreamt that we were sitting in a diner, eating pancakes. And I picked up my knife. But instead of using it to cut up my pancakes, I… I… I threw it at Tabs like a javelin.”

He says the last sentence with his eyes on the ground, terrified of the expression she must be making, the horror that’s almost definitely in her eyes. 

Dani just looks mildly concerned and confused. “Did she, um. Did she die?”

“I don’t know! I woke up,” he says. “I always wake up before I actually see her die, but I’m  _ sure _ that’s what happened. I threw a knife at her!”

“It was a dream,” Dani points out. “I once had a dream that I was a mermaid and I made out with Winona Rider. Shit doesn’t have to make sense in dreams.” 

“But it’s… it’s gotten to the point that it’s every night,” Roberto says. “I dreamt that I pushed Tabs down an elevator shaft. I dreamt that I was on a rocketship and I locked her out in the cold void of space. How could I even have these  _ thoughts _ in my head? How can any  _ decent _ person have such dreadful thoughts about a sweet, innocent girl like Tabitha?” 

Dani blinks. “We’re uh. We’re talking about the same Tabitha, right? The girl who stole all of Jimmy’s weed and then lost half of it at the laundromat?” 

“Danielle…”

“Right, I’m sorry,” she says, stifling her laughs. Roberto’s always overdramatic but this is taking it a little far. He’s genuinely terrified. “Look… I’m  _ sure _ you don’t really want Tabs dead. This is just your subconscious throwing random stuff at you to see what sticks.” 

“But  _ why _ ?” he laments. “Why do I keep dreaming about it?” 

Dani sucks on the straw of her drink until it starts to make gasping, rattling noises. “Do you want me to use my mirage power on you?” she asks. “I can. Might help you figure out what your subconscious is trying to tell you. Do you want me to show you?”

Roberto sags, looking down at his feet. “Yes, do it. Anything.” 

“Alright.” 

She reaches out with her mutant abilities, tugs an image from his mind and projects it in 3D realness. 

Roberto smiles a little and points with the hand holding his beer. “Hey, you made a Sam!” The image of Cannonball looks as real as life, with his ears just a little too big for his head and the sun glinting off his goggles. “Wait, how’d you do that? I’m not scared of Sam.”

“No,” Dani says slowly, “you’re not.” 

“Then I don’t…” Roberto kicks at the dust and dirt beneath his feet. “I don’t get it.”

“You know how my powers work,” she points out. “It’s not just fears. I can show people their heart’s desire. And you—”

“No.”

“Bobby, I’m just—”

“No, okay, c’mon, that’s not,” he sputters like a broken washing machine. “I’m not…  _ like that _ , okay? And he’s…” Bobby groans and runs his hands through his thick curls, making his hair messier than it already was. “Make him go away,” he tells Dani, glaring at the facsimile of Sam Guthrie. She disintegrates the illusion, but she doesn’t leave Bobby alone.

“I’m just trying to help you,” she promises. “And… and I know you and Tabby have been messing around, and that’s… whatever, really, I just… you need to think about what you’re doing, Bobby. Think about why you do the things you do.” 

“You know what? Last I checked, you’re not the boss, Terry is,” he points out, letting his annoyance take over for his anxiety. “You’re not in charge of the team and you’re  _ definitely _ not in charge of my personal life.”

“Your personal life  _ is _ my personal life,” Dani grumbles, stomping around in so she can cut him off before he walks away. His little legs don’t take him too far. “Bobby, I’ve known you longer than anybody else. If you weren’t on the team, I don’t know if  _ I _ would be here. I’m not saying you need to run to Westchester right now and tell Sam how you feel, but you should at least acknowledge it in  _ yourself _ .”

“Why is it your business?” he demands.

“Maybe… okay, maybe it isn’t,” Dani acknowledges. “But you  _ asked _ me for help.”

“I take it back! Or… or… your powers aren’t working right,” he says, grasping at anything. “Sam is  _ not _ my ‘heart’s desire’ or some such nonsense. Your powers are defective.”

“Bobby…”

“I like girls,” Bobby clarifies, a little defensive.

“That’s fine,” Dani points out. “But do you like  _ Tabitha _ ? Or do you just like her boyfriend?” 

He opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then opens it again. “Sam is my best friend,” he says. “Why would… ? And, and, he’s happy with Tabitha… right? It’s ridiculous to think that I could… that I might…”

“Bobby,” Dani says, as gently as she can, “look around you. Xi’an came here with her two filmmaker girlfriends. Those guys in the tie-dye shirts over there are holding hands. And, well, ya know, Rictor and Shatterstar. Welcome to the nineties, hothead. You can feel however you feel. It’s okay.” 

And even though she’s probably right— she’s Dani, and she almost always is— Roberto stalks off, shaking his head like he can shake out these treacherous thoughts and feelings. This isn’t what he needs right now. He needs to relax and cut loose, and maybe tonight he won’t have a horrible dream about murdering Tabby. 

* * *

Bobby’s bad day turns into a waking nightmare. Not just because of the reanimated Colossal Man and Selene— that’s pretty much an average outing for X-Force. No, the real kicker is that Sam shows up. 

“We… we have to tell him, right?” Tabby whispers, her hand gripping his hand like a vice. “We have to tell Sam what we’ve been… you know.” 

“We can’t,” Bobby says. But the prospect of Sam finding out he and Tabs kissed doesn’t even seem that scary right now. So Sam will finally know that he’s a selfish, backstabbing jerk. So what? More pressing to Bobby right now is that Sam will see right through him and realize what he’s only just realized himself— that Tabby may be cute, but she’s not the one he’s pining after. 

Would Dani talk to him? Would she tell Sam about the forbidden desire she fished out of Bobby’s mind? It’s too terrible to think about. 

The trouble is, no matter how much Bobby tries to avoid Sam, Sam keeps tagging along after him. He just grins big and acts happy to see him. Bobby’s sure that if he knew the truth, Sam wouldn’t be at all happy interacting with him. Sam asks him how X-Force has been going and what sights they’ve seen on their road trip. He even asks about Bobby’s mom and how she’s doing. 

Sam is so nice and thoughtful and perfect, and Bobby feels like his head’s going to explode. 

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out at one point, stupidly.

Sam squints at him. “For what?”

“For… for not calling,” Bobby adlibs. “For not keeping in touch.” 

Sam’s hand on his shoulder burns. “Aw, that’s okay,” he promises. “You’re my best friend, Bobby. I knew you were thinkin’ of me.” He’s more right than he knows. Bobby offers a weak smile and ducks away from his touch, mumbles something about going to track down Dani. 

He finds her lying on the hood of the car, staring up at the clear night sky, and he drops down next to her. “You were right,” Bobby says. “You were right, but I’m not… I don’t want to talk about it anymore, just… you were right.” 

Dani snakes an arm around his shoulders and squeezes. “Love you, hothead,” she says, because no matter how much she may tease him, she understands how difficult an admission that is. 

“Love you, too, chief,” he says, and a shooting star arcs above them. 


End file.
